Amazon Plans Massive Layoffs After Nine Months of President Trump
Online retail giant Amazon plans to slash as many as 30,000 corporate jobs Tuesday, which would be the biggest number of layoffs at the company in three years.
Reuters reports that the cuts would amount to 10 percent of the company’s close to 350,000 corporate employees, and would be across different departments. The last time Amazon cut this many jobs was 2022, when 27,000 were slashed late in the year. The move follows Amazon CEO Andy Jassy saying in June that AI tools would lead to job cuts.
It’s not a good indicator for the economy under President Trump. The website Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts, estimates that 98,344 technology employees have been laid off this year from 216 companies. The site also estimates that 71,981 government employees have been laid off by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, out of a total of 182,528 federal employees departing from the jobs.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs report last month showed unemployment at a four-year high, with only 22,000 jobs added in August (compared to a forecast of 75,000). Thanks to the government shutdown, job and unemployment figures from September aren’t known, but they are likely pretty bad. ADP, which processes payrolls, reported earlier this month that the private sector lost 32,000 jobs in September.
While the shutdown hides an official tally of how bad employment numbers are in America right now, Amazon’s impending layoffs, and estimates from other sources, indicate that the economy isn’t very strong right now—and the buck stops with the president.